Mecha

by J. F. Holmes

  However, the town did not looked victimized by such a beast. It appeared peaceful, whole, and unburnt. Randall passed the spyglass back. “Are we sure we have the right town?”

  Garrick nodded and gestured away from the village to areas of the clearing between the tree-line and the outer fields. Randall looked closer and now noticed long sections of greenery that had been utterly denuded and reduced to bare soil and rock. Blackened swaths of stone and strips of heat-fused natural glass now stood out under his greater scrutiny.

  “Definite dragon-sign, but not in the town itself,” Garrick said. “It’s on the approaches. See those berms and trenches? Those are fighting positions. There was a battle here. It’s been a year or more since, with the seasons obscuring what happened, but that’s what it was. There may have been damage in the town as well, but it’s been cleared away completely. I cannot tell.”

  He turned to face Randall. “Are you sure we know the way things stand, wizard? I would sorely hate to be at the center of a dishonorable enterprise. I’ve enough staining my soul as it is.”

  Randall frowned at him. “It’s a dragon, Sir Knight, a threat to any man, woman, or child under its wings. Things stand that we’ve been hired to slay it, and we’ve accepted payment to do that. Honor dictates we finish the job. That’s it.”

  Garrick shook his head and looked back at Auricshire. “I hope you’re right.”

  All through the afternoon and evening, they worked in concert to charge Sir Potbelly. The teams of oxen and mules cranked hard around windlasses, twisting preternaturally-strong ropes into tight spindles of mechanical torsion, held back from releasing their potential by ratchets and pawls as delicately balanced as a watchmaker’s gears. Opposing catapult arms acted like bundles of musculature in the stack knight’s arms, legs, and torso. A carefully stoked firebox burned hot and bright in Potbelly’s wide stomach, boiling a copper reservoir of water, and charging several separate spherical steel pressure vessels piped throughout the war machine, providing both launching force for the chain lances across its back, and restorative cranking power for the torsion bundles driving the limbs.

  As a late dawn at last crested the mountains to bathe Auricshire and the Gilt Valley in light, Sir Potbelly sat ready on the edge of the oxcart. The size of a house, the machine looked like a squat, wooden-framed ape in gleaming silver and gold armor, with arms too long or legs too short, but definitely a torso and gut that showed it to be appropriately named. Smoke churned from a pair of stacks over each shoulder pauldron, and whistling steam leaked from every seam. Long hafts of tree-sized lances and halberds stuck up from the machine’s rear cuirass like arrows in a quiver, and a giant war hammer swung opposite a stupendously broad and long sword on either side of the faulds at the machine’s waist.

  A barn-door-sized hatch stood open on Potbelly’s breastplate. With firm handshakes and embraces by and between all, the misfits of the Company said goodbye to one another. Every battle might be their last, and despite all the annoyances of the road and the rapid build-up, they were each still the closest any of them had to family. Garrick himself stopped short of wrapping Melodya up in his arms, and she just shook her head. He had no idea whether she took that as rejection for what she was and how she looked, or as disappointment that he could not allow his own sense of chivalry to soften and allow him to express his unrequited love.

  Randall climbed through the hatch and up into Potbelly’s dome-like helm and the narrow slits he looked out to orient them. Melodya climbed through and down, taking her seat almost right atop the boiler. Garrick climbed through last and closed the hatch behind him, taking the seat immediately behind it, such that they were each stacked, one, two, three, in seats atop one another.

  The interior was sweltering, so Randall turned a valve and released a small stream of steam into a set of reciprocating bellows to drive vented fans positioned all around them. Air began to flow through the stack knight’s torso so they did not immediately parboil, but it remained for too hot and humid for comfort. It was worst for Melodya but, fortunately, djinnae were better adapted for it than men.

  Garrick and Melodya strapped guide wires and actuators to themselves, around the chest and arms for the knight, and around the pelvis and legs for the dancer. Randall busied himself with a dizzying array of valves, levers, pulls, and crystals, touching them not just with his hands, but with magic, casting out projections of his mind and extensions of his soul. He reached out. He could feel Garrick linking in to Potbelly’s upper half, and Melodya into the lower. He could feel the raw power and work energy they had poured into the machine all night straining to be unleashed. It wanted to be free. Whether that happened in an explosive release that killed them all, or in a controlled fashion to accomplish their goals, was up to all of them in concert.

  Randall nodded. “Okay. Let’s go start a fight.”

  Working together, with the wizard manipulating the release and replenishment of energies, the knight skillfully controlling the arms, and the dancer gracefully driving the stocky legs of the stack knight, Sir Potbelly leaned forward and rose with authority from the oxcart for the first time in months. There was a momentary flash of panic among the three as Potbelly overcompensated and nearly tipped over, but in less than the blink of an eye, they synchronized their efforts and steadied the behemoth. On the ground, Old Jeff, Even Older Jenn, and young Bertram cheered and clapped, and retreated far out of the way.

  Potbelly stepped forward, swung its arms, and stepped again faster, and faster, and faster, until it ran. The ground shook with the war machine’s footfalls. Rotten tree trunks crushed to pulp beneath its hobnailed sabatons. Stout, living branches broke away and fell to the ground as the vambraces and couters on its lower arms smashed through them, held up and forward to protect the helm as they rushed through the thickest part of the canopy.

  Within Potbelly’s cuirass and helm, an excruciating cacophony arose. The sound of branches snapping and logs crushing transmitted from the outside was nothing to the sounds from inside: pawls clanking over ratcheted gears, shafts engaging and disengaging, gears churning, valves chattering, steam escaping, reciprocating arms banging back and forth. Over the din, Randall shouted down directions, providing Garrick and Melodya guidance to augment their own narrow view through their armored eye slits. It was a wonder it moved with any coordinated sense of purpose.

  But move it did.

  Sir Potbelly burst from the tree line and onto the open, fire-blasted plain before Auricshire. There was no hiding it. The stack knight was the largest machine anyone might ever have seen move, and its terrifying noise and imposing appearance had caused many an enemy to break and run before it. The people of the mining village could not run, but they did gape out windows and line up along the palisade to stare in wonder at what had come upon them, trying to discern if it was friend or foe.

  Randall did not care so much about the town. He was more interested in what ruled the skies above it. They brought Potbelly to a stop, and he looked up, trying to spot whatever crag or crevice the dragon might nest in. Reaching behind him, he pulled a hanging cord and sounded a mighty steam whistle. Its call echoed down the Gilt Valley and up, up, up into the surrounding peaks.

  Nothing appeared.

  Randall yanked the whistle on again. This time, bells sounded from the town as well, a rapid ringing to bring all able-bodied warriors to arms.

  Still nothing…

  Yet…barely audible over the pinging and hissing within even a still stack knight, Randall heard a clatter of rocks high above. The clatter became the sharp cracks and rumbles of boulders shifting and rolling down into harder stone and crumbling. And then…

  The roar of the wyrm sounded even louder than the whistle immediately behind him. And where that steam-driven sound pitched high, this reverberated with deep, low vibrations, sound that shook bones to dust and spines to jelly. It was an alien thing, a cry from hell itself. Randall was glad he had emptied his bladder before climbing in. Looking down, he pee
red through the dark, steaming interior of the torso, past framing members and stays, to Garrick and Melodya. The knight appeared placid, as if the call of a dragon was nothing to him. Barely visible through the darkness and steam, Melodya’s veil hid the ruined lower half of her face, but her eyes flashed with golden light, expressing eagerness rather than fear.

  Randall wished he could face this thing with as much courage as poured from them.

  Movement snapped his gaze back upward. A dark shape shot up into the sky from atop the peak directly behind Auricshire. Randall’s breath caught in his throat. It was immense. A true dragon rather than a smaller and near-mindless wyvern that some mistook for dragons, the monster had four long, sinuous limbs, both the front and back legs ending in yard-long talons. The impossibly long body was one third head and neck, one third torso, and one third tail. The serpentine beast appeared both gaunt and enormous, widening suddenly at the chest and flanks to give its limbs a powerful anchor from which to strike, and to carry lungs capable of blowing fire throughout this whole valley. Wings, easily broader than the body was long, beat at the air with a rolling crack and snap like thunder from a storm directly overhead. Yet, as broad as they were, they still seemed too thin and insubstantial to support the dragon in the air and drive it so high, so fast. It was clear to Randall that this beast was as much a thing of magic as Sir Potbelly was.

  The townspeople of Auricshire fled from the palisade and disappeared behind cover, making themselves scarce for the coming battle. And that battle was not long in arriving.

  The dragon wheeled overhead and came screaming down the long axis of the valley, giving itself a good, lengthy approach to Sir Potbelly. Melodya shifted their stance and brought them to stand sideways, bracing both legs. Garrick reached back with one of Potbelly’s hands and took the shaft of a grand-halberd, a straight log tipped with a four-foot spear blade, and featuring a hooked axe head at the blade’s base. The stack knight gripped it tight in both gauntlets and thrust the weapon up and forward at an angle, easily adding 30 feet to their already considerable reach.

  The dragon dipped low in its headlong flight and opened its bearded, snake-like mouth wide. Double pairs of implacable, flinty eyes winked at them beneath a crown of seven ringed horns. Its chest swelled, and liquid fire the color and consistency of magma poured forth to engulf the stack knight.

  Randall grunted in exertion and burning agony. The temperature and force of the dragon’s flames could easily melt straight through their armor and torch every frame and stave. However, Sir Potbelly was not only sheathed in steel and copper. Industrial magic had developed excellent techniques for redirecting energies from one point to another, and Randall devoted his attention to that task now, pulling heat away and dumping it wherever he could. The firebox flared. The reservoir of water flashed almost entirely to steam, overpressurizing the steel kettles and causing relief valves to chatter and blow, but also replenishing nearly all the energy they had expended thus far.

  But still there was more fire. The hobnails below their sabatons flared white hot and melted away, but they drove the heat deep into the earth, creating branching fans of molten glass fulgurites like bolts of lightning striking a beach. The grass for fifty feet around them scorched away.

  His redirection was not perfect. The halberd shaft smoked. The armor on that side glowed white and red hot. Some of the staves and framing did burn, but not to ash or vapor. They held up and retained their strength. Sir Potbelly and its occupants endured, and as the dragon stopped blowing fire and inhaled, passing directly overhead, they acted.

  The stack knight leapt upward and pivoted about, at the same time thrusting up with the grand-halberd. The hardened steel spearpoint deflected off the creature’s scale armor, slid along its belly, and finally penetrated as they continued upward with enough force to shove between the scales. The dragon cried out, its inhalation interrupted, as the spear blade dug deep and levered over, carving through meat. As the flight continued past and the spear blade began to pull out, the hooked axe-head bit in and caught the edge of the penetration. They were jerked forward, and the dragon was yanked back and down, until the tough, leathery skin gave way and the halberd sliced a long and jagged gash in the monster’s belly.

  The halberd fell from their grasp as Sir Potbelly tumbled from the sky. The injured wyrm beat its wings in desperation, arresting its own fall and climbing torturously back into the sky. They hit hard, but rolled to dispel some of the momentum. Inside the potbellied cuirass, stays snapped and frames cracked. Pipes sprang leaks, spilling cooling water and steam alike throughout the interior. The torsion bundles in Potbelly’s left forearm sprang free and exploded with all their tightly-bound force, blowing out the vambrace and shedding bits of catapult timber. Plates of armor, hot and weak already from the fiery onslaught, could not handle hitting the ground so hard, and snapped their rivets to hang loose. And the three crewmembers were each rattled and wrenched about.

  As soon as he could focus, Randall worked fast to seal off the leaks and get them back up before the dragon could make a second pass. Melodya and Garrick worked together to bring them to a staggering stance and turned them so they could track the passage of the wyrm. Randall had Garrick test the left arm. He could flex and bend it, but the gauntlet just hung limp from the bare forearm frame. Aside from using it to slap the dragon, it was useless. They would be reduced to a single-handed grip for the rest of the fight.

  The dragon hung in the air high overhead and down the valley, flapping in place. Bright red blood stained its belly, pouring freely, but not fast enough to bring it down. The beast swept one talon across its flesh and knocked the halberd free, still hooked in. It roared and dove again.

  Garrick reached back and pulled their other grand-halberd from the quiver. Melodya assumed the same stance as before, and Garrick brandished the weapon, but singlehanded, the halberd would be much less capable. Randall set to his own labors, shouting commands down to them.

  The dragon came in, its approach higher up this time, out of reach from where they’d struck it before. It also flew slower, both because it was injured and, as it was higher and further away, its flames would be less effective. It would need to burn them longer this time to outlast the endurance Randall had already shown. The creature was no mere animal. It had its own wisdom and intelligence, arguably as great as a man’s. Perhaps greater.

  It swept into range. As soon as the wyrm’s jaws levered wide open to cast its fiery breath, Sir Potbelly crouched down and aimed the quiver across its back at the flight path before the beast.

  Steam exploded from the quiver, and two lances shot up and over. The dragon spun in mid-air and rolled, bringing its wings in close. The steel points on the lances missed…but the chains trailing behind the shafts of both projectiles caught and wrapped around the wings.

  Suddenly encumbered, the desperate dragon flailed in the air. Barbs on the chain links dug into the thin leather of the wings, ripping them to shreds. The long, heavy logs of the chained lances swung about wildly, beating the beast senseless, until at last it could not stay in the air.

  The dragon crashed hard enough to shake men in the town from their feet, half a mile away. Potbelly took it in stride, stumbling forward instead of falling, and straightening the stumble into a run. Halberd held forward, they drove right at the downed monster.

  The dragon roared and spun about. Even wrapped in chains, it still moved with authority and great agility. The creature’s tail whipped at Potbelly’s legs, striking the right greave hard. The hit knocked their legs from under them, and they fell, rolling again. Not as hard a fall as last time, but still a vulnerable position.

  Melodya levered her legs and rolled Potbelly onto its back. Garrick thrust up out of reflex, driving the halberd’s point at the looming dragon. The beast snarled, snatched the halberd from the single gauntlet’s grasp with both manipulating forelegs, and snapped the thick log shaft like a twig.

  Using their mostly-useless left arm and both legs
in concert, they rolled Sir Potbelly to the side, and then up to a kneeling position. Garrick reached down and took up the unsheathed sword at the war machine’s waist. The dragon raked its fore talons across at them and caught the edge of the blade. Preternatural chitin versus magically-hardened steel proved to be a toss-up for resiliency. Their blade was knocked aside, but all three talons on the limb were sliced free and flung across the battlefield.

  They both backed up and paused. The dragon regarded Sir Potbelly and saw an old stack knight, past its prime, battered, with one arm demolished, limping on the opposite leg, almost stripped of weapons, yet still in the fight. They looked upon the dragon and saw a beast covered in ancient scars, its wide gray-green scales showing an endless procession of rings, like the rings of an impossibly old tree, but as old as it was, it was not infirm or decrepit. It had been in this world for millennia. It was determined to remain here, developing its hoard and its wisdom for millennia more.

  They both struck. The dragon snapped out with its other foreleg, this time aiming its talons at the useless left arm and the vulnerable cuirass on that side rather than the formidable sword. Sir Potbelly darted forward, Melodya heedless of the further damage it would do to the near-crippled right leg. Garrick swung the sword with all the machine’s might. And Randall murmured a word of power far more effective than the one Garrick had utilized the week before.

  The sword blazed with white light and passed through the dragon’s long neck almost without resistance. The wyrm’s swiping foreleg lost all volition, such that the razor-sharp talons only scored the armor of the cuirass instead of slashing it open. The dragon’s headless body twitched and fell, a threat no more to the people of this valley.

  Randall breathed a sigh of relief. They were alive. The task was done. And they would be paid.

  He looked down through the torso and smiled. Garrick smiled back at him, nodded, and then flicked his right arm. Outside, Potbelly flung the sword aside. It had been a very effective weapon, but now the thing was ruined, warped and drooping from both the heat and the punishment it had endured, slicing through the scales, flesh, and spine of a great old dragon.